My Aim is True.
In March this year I was being served at my local Sainsbury’s and was reluctantly drawn into conversation by the woman behind the counter; she revealed she lived on the same street I used to live on and mentioned a friend of mine who also lived there, a friend I’d lost touch with since moving. A few exchanged words about this friend – name of Alison – followed, and then the woman serving me casually said, ‘Oh, she died, didn’t she’ – in a house-fire, apparently, ‘a couple of years ago’. I thought I hadn’t seen her around for a while because she’d moved. I didn’t expect this.
In a way, I’ve been lucky to reach my mid-40s and only experienced the loss of beloved pets, aged grandparents or relatives I hadn’t seen in years. For anyone whose disconnection from their family has resulted in familial affection and loyalty being transferred to friends, however, the first death of a friend can be devastating. What made hearing of Alison’s death worse was the fact that it hadn’t just happened; a cursory search through the online archives of the local newspaper actually told me it had happened in April 2010 – four whole years ago. I could’ve sworn I’d last seen her a couple of years previously – three at the most; but a root through my diary of 2010 told me my last encounter with Alison had taken place just three days before she died. Like me, Alison lived alone, which meant she died alone, at home and in a fire, on the eve of her 50th birthday.
Alison was one of those people who make a lasting impression because they’re unlike anyone else we’ve ever met, a person without a reference point, someone genuinely incomparable. She was the most eccentric individual it’s ever been my pleasure to know and also one of the funniest, often unintentionally so. Nothing about her was remotely conventional, so it makes sense that our first meeting remains one of my life’s more unusual ones. I was walking my dog on a street behind where I lived one evening in November 2002 and saw what I assumed to be an abandoned Guy across the street, a slouched figure in an indolent parody of the lotus position. I looked again and gradually realised it wasn’t a ragdoll effigy destined for the top of a bonfire, but a human being, a woman. I approached her to ask her if she was okay and she answered in a mumbling fashion without lifting her head. Having been recently associated with a community of hard drug-users, I thought I recognised all-too familiar signs, but she insisted she wasn’t on drugs. With the help of a passer-by, I managed to get her to her feet and inquire where she lived; my face received a smack of spirits from her breath and I finally knew the cause of her condition before proceeding to effectively carry her home as though she were a wounded soldier on the battlefield; thankfully, it turned out she lived in the neighbouring apartment block to mine and we were no more than 200 yards from home.
After this bizarre opening, I used to see her around on the streets but we never spoke; only several months later, when she finally deigned to open a neighbourly conversation with me did she admit she’d been embarrassed to speak to me on account of the state she’d been in the day we met. But I soon realised Alison liked a drink. No binge-drinking pub-crawler, though – more the proper old-school alcoholic indulging alone at home with bottles for company. She had the classic spirit-addict physique, without an ounce of fat on her, almost as if she’d once been a model or ballerina whose dedication to the profession had rendered her incapable of weight-gain; and it was impossible to guess how old she was. She dressed in a manner that wasn’t age-specific and had the aura of loner about her, with no suggestion of husband, partner or family. Her accent was southern ‘posh’, and I quickly learnt she had a fascinating (if occasionally frustrating) habit of going off on a tangent during a conversation, switching subject mid-sentence, as well as opening conversations with the quirkiest of ice-breakers, such as ‘Have you ever tried Coco Pops?’ We initially used to bump into each other on the street and stand and chat either for a minute or half-an-hour, depending which unpredictable mood Alison happened to be in, something I could never second-guess beforehand. It also depended on how much she’d had to drink. Then she started calling round at my flat, usually to borrow tobacco or loose change; she was in the same breadline strata as me, which hardly qualified me as the best person to come to for a loan that wouldn’t be paid back. But even when I wasn’t feeling sociable and had nothing to give her, she always made me laugh. Alison could come out with an almost Peter Cook-esque surreal, spontaneous observation in the same way most people will make small-talk about the weather.
She revealed snippets of her past in dribs and drabs: She’d been amongst a contingent of servicemen’s families evacuated from Cyprus in the early 60s (her father had been in the RAF at the time); she was a cousin of Wilko Johnson; she attended St Martin’s School of Art when Jarvis Cocker was there in the early 90s; she had been in an ‘abusive marriage’ she’d entered into because she was pregnant. The latter surprised me the most; she had a child? There’d been no hint whatsoever of that. But for all Alison’s undoubted entertainment value, there was an undeniable air of indefinable sadness surrounding her that always made me think of Eleanor Rigby; she seemed as lonely as I was. There were moments when we could have been more than friends. I twice asked her out early on and she turned me down; when we became closer, she asked me out more than twice and I fudged the issue; the timing was never right with either of us for that kind of relationship.
The more we saw of each other, the needier she seemed to become; but I wasn’t in a position to help her, as I was going through a bad patch myself. I’m ashamed to say sometimes I crossed the street to avoid her and when she once came round to ask if she could move-in with me, I refused. When I eventually relocated a mile or so up the road, I didn’t tell her in advance and when I used to bump into her thereafter, I was determined not to give her my new address. And then I suddenly never saw her again. Only when I found out she’d died four years previously did I belatedly realise how fond of her I really was. This overdue realisation motivated me to turn detective, attempting to chart the progress of a life that began in the affluence of West Sussex and ended in a poky rented flat in Leeds as it burned down around her, estranged from family, friends and (as I discovered) two sons. What had led her to this end? I eventually acquired copies of both her birth and death certificates and have applied for copies of the coroner’s report from the inquest into her death as well as the pathologist’s post-mortem. Incidentally, only two people attended this inquest: the pathologist and the fire-officer who put out the flames in her flat. No family; no friends.
I found out where she was buried and visited her grave – a pitiful little plot, overgrown with weeds and marked by a pathetic little ‘corporation’ cross with a plaque that didn’t even state her date of birth. It was an appalling monument to a special person that had slid into neglect because no one cared. A friend who accompanied me on the journey was disgusted and suggested we do something about it, so we did. We purchased the necessary tools and began to transform Alison’s grave into a more fitting resting place for her, cutting the grass, planting flowers and adding a plaque with a personal tribute. I documented this transformation with photos and experienced the rarely-discussed positive side of social networking as a consequence, inundated with an overwhelming wave of kind comments on the project, something that climaxed with a friend of a friend I barely knew building a spectacular new cross for the grave. There was a determination in me to prove that somebody gave a shit about Alison and that someone who had made a difference deserved better; and it was nice to learn that this appears to have struck a chord with so many people. Perhaps Alison’s unnecessary, tragic death served as a sober reminder to all of us who live alone that there but for the grace of God…and so on.
But the strangest gesture of appreciation came one day when I opened a cupboard I had already opened before that same day and saw fifty pounds had suddenly appeared out of thin air, three crisp notes that hadn’t been there a couple of hours earlier. Although every logical avenue was explored, none offered an explanation. Besides, I knew where the money had really come from the moment I saw it. I told you she was a special person.
Petunia Winegum.
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August 10, 2014 at 10:26 am -
Thanks Anna for this beautiful story.
This is a completely unimaginable situation for me, coming as I do from a huge family.
Dad & Mum both were from families of 10, so I have literally dozens of cousins.
We have one cousin living through the turmoil of having been abused & taken shelter in drink & drugs,
but, though his behaviour is chaotic & anti social, an eye is kept on him.It must be so strange to live without family & almost friendless.
On a completely separate topic, that of world domination, may I suggest you google : Bill Still Money Masters
It’s 3 . 5 hrs, a documentary on the history of banking, & most worth watching.
Just one interesting fact : during the Napoleonic wars one Rothschild brother was financing les rosbifs, while another Rothschild was financing the Frogs, each guaranteeing the losers debts. The English Rothschild had a fleeter courier system that the Duke of Wellington’s army & got the news of Wellington’s victory at Waterloo back to England first. The English Rothschild pretended gloom on the stock exchange, making substantial sell orders, & triggering a panic. His minions bought England for him for pennies on the Pound that day.On media control may I suggest you google : 6 corporations own the mainstream media.
How anyone can view the BBC nowadays as anything other than a New World Order propaganda factory is beyond me.
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August 10, 2014 at 11:04 am -
That’s a very special piece, on many levels. I can well imagine her plight, by the way. And I have lived on my own and isolated in a flat in Leeds. And there but for the Grace of God goes me. Indeed, it may yet be so. But today, let us think of and pray for Alison. Thank you for looking after her resting place – that is a wonderful thing to have done.
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August 10, 2014 at 11:21 am -
Thanks for the kind comments. I was uncertain whether or not to submit this piece, as it is a very personal story; but I’d been initially reticent about posting the photos documenting the progress of the grave’s transformation on FB as well. The positive response this provoked, however, made me realise this sad saga has touched a nerve in that loneliness and isolation from mainstream society is something that many more have experience of than is acknowledged. At least where Alison is concerned, she hasn’t been buried along with her name.
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August 10, 2014 at 12:09 pm -
It is a telling commentary of the ease with which one can become isolated in the modern world, and other matters. Very moving. Thanks you for posting.
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August 10, 2014 at 4:42 pm -
You write really well and in a way I can relate to. Thank you., from a 56-year-old living on their own (but enjoying that!)
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August 11, 2014 at 11:57 pm -
Nicely written. Your piece reminds me of so many tales of wild animals, of whose sad lives I read so often.
Alison deserved better; but she didn’t die without friends or family: she had you. As I find myself saying so often to wildlife rehabilitators in similar circumstances: thank you for being there for her.
ΠΞ
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August 10, 2014 at 12:33 pm -
Thank you for a meaningful account. I’ not usually an over-enthusiastic conspiracy theorist but I am tempted to wonder whether there is some kind of loneliness enabling going on – “care in the community” etc. ” Get rid of them and let them die off, it’ll save us a lot of money and effort”
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August 12, 2014 at 12:01 am -
There are so many that, beset by mental illness and unable to find the sanctuary they need (asylum), take their own lives.
ΠΞ
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August 10, 2014 at 12:34 pm -
This is the missing “m”.
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August 10, 2014 at 2:05 pm -
I can empathise. 20 years ago I had to aggressively “lose touch with” a very dear and close friend because of her drinking. She was, like me, yet another lifestyle loner.
I often missed her, and assumed I would run into her again at some point until I discovered she had died, in 2012. I have no idea how, the obituaries leave no clues. It cannot have been any terrible tragedy, she was much older than I, and ’72 when she died.
At the beginning of July I made it to her grave with a hydrangea in a huge ceramic pot…she collected outdoor plants in pots in life, and would not have appreciated cut flowers. I was horrified (as she would have been) that they had buried her with her sexually abusive father, and also that, on the day after the annual mass for the dead, when the whole cemetery looked like a garden centre, there was only one fading, dusty silk arrangement in memory of the last to be buried, a couple of months earlier. But it was typical of the starkly barren nature of the family she had described to me…
I realised that the last time I had actually seen her was also in a cemetery, when we went searching for the grave of the baby she had been told (by our now notorious religious orders) had died at 3 weeks old. I did the research, and it is just as likely she was shipped to America for adoption against her mother’s wishes, but with no way to ever be sure either way, we took armfuls of flowers and photos at the relavant “Angel’s Grave”.
It saddens me that the drinking she was driven to by terrible things beyond her control meant that I could not face seeking her out while she was still alive…but I know I loved her dearly and she was a great formative influence in my life anyway.
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August 10, 2014 at 4:01 pm -
I can certainly recognise some of the obstacles I’ve encountered when you say ‘the obituaries leave no clues’. I’ve had to adopt an investigative approach to piece together not only Alison’s death, but her life before I knew her. When I tracked down her grave I was told I wasn’t entitled to erect a headstone because I wasn’t ‘family’; I translated that as meaning I actually gave a shit. I’ve badgered the coroner’s office for weeks to get the information surrounding what happened to her because I need to know the details that aren’t available anywhere else. We shared one mutual friend in the neighbourhood, yet when I visited her she didn’t even know Alison was dead. I’ve written to the RAF and I’ve emailed Jarvis Cocker. Any snippet of information seems to help. And, yes, there’s undeniable guilt that I didn’t do more for her when she was alive; but a drink problem isn’t easy to deal with when you have your own problems, alas; and at that time, I did.
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August 10, 2014 at 5:36 pm -
“a cursory search through the online archives of the local newspaper actually told me it had happened in April 2010”.
Please, don’t get me wrong when I say you were ‘lucky’ that your friend died after the MSM realised that there was such a thing as the internet. Try tracing anyone who had the temerity to die before the staff of any of the local “Rabbit Breeder Weekly Incorporating Daily Nappy Fetishists” (the EDP is a good example) found out how to work a scanner. WHEN I win the Euromillions lottery I shall buy up as many local newspaper archives as I can and put them online free of charge. If Big News would follow suit then that would, I think, not only make every Searcher After Whatever Truth’s life easier but would also , at one swype of the keypad, raise the standard of Citizen Journalism across the board.
Rant aside, you did a GOOD thing for your friend. As a (dry) alcoholic I can empathise with Alison’s isolation…there but for iron self will and the love of a good woman go I.
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August 10, 2014 at 6:54 pm -
Information is supposed to be freely available from the Coroner’s Office, but I know they can get awkward. :o(
I know most people die of asphyxia in fires, and I hope that was so for Alison.
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August 10, 2014 at 8:15 pm -
Yes, they – the Coroner’s Office – are getting awkward, but I’m determined to get this information. One thing the death certificate revealed is that Alison actually died of a heart attack, with no mention of smoke inhalation. What I don’t know is if this then caused the fire (i.e. knocking over a candle as she collapsed) or if the shock of the fire brought on a cardiac arrest. It’s so horrible to contemplate, but my mind won’t be at rest till I know.
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August 10, 2014 at 8:46 pm -
“Alison actually died of a heart attack, ”
Most people do die from their heart stopping. It’s pretty much a forgone conclusion….or as doctor once said to me ‘if you can’t see a bullet hole and their head is still on then you write ‘heart attack’, it will never be totally wrong’. I’m assuming there was an autopsy in Alison’s case?
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August 10, 2014 at 9:00 pm -
What I am trying to say in my uniquely unsubtle way is: if Alison wasn’t given a full autopsy ie someone with letters after their name didn’t actually hold her heart in his hand then I would treat the ‘heart attack’ COD with some scepsis . “Fire deaths are some of the most challenging fatalities, both from the investigative and the autopsy aspect. “- Forsenic Path Of Thermal Injuries
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August 10, 2014 at 11:27 pm -
This is why I require the details from the coroner, which will hopefully be forthcoming soon – including the post-mortem.
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August 11, 2014 at 1:38 am -
I get where you are coming from, and sometimes, the bald truth, however awful, is a lot gentler than giving our imagination free range.
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August 11, 2014 at 3:45 pm -
… the death certificate revealed… that Alison actually died of a heart attack…
From a US perspective this is odd language to use on a death certificate, because “heart attack” is an obsolete layman’s term, not a medical one. A myocardial infarction would be when the heart stops due to lack of oxygen caused by a clot in a cardiac artery, which is what most people would call a heart attack. Another possibility would be “cardiac arrest secondary to… ” for example asphyxiation, coronary heart disease, or a cardiac arrhythmia (i.e. an electrical or mechanical failure of the heart’s beating mechanism or its valves).
Cardiac arrest just means that the heart has stopped and of course this occurs in all deaths, so it cannot per se be the proximate cause of death.
Putting “heart attack” on the death certificate just seems like sloppy work.
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August 11, 2014 at 4:21 pm -
For the purposes of this article, I simplified what it said into layman’s terms (being one myself). I had to contact my own GP for translation as to the actual wording on the death certificate. The latter you listed was the cause of death given.
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August 10, 2014 at 8:51 pm -
“Many a road has been taken by many a first friend/And each one of them, I never saw again”.
Thank you for posting this, petunia. I read it and it will stay with me.
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August 11, 2014 at 10:33 am -
Raccoonistas have a great deal of life experience between them.
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August 11, 2014 at 10:39 am -
As a postscript to this article and the comments, I thought I’d let you all know I received an email from the Coroner’s Office this morning and I’ve been authorised a copy of the post-mortem.
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August 11, 2014 at 1:10 pm -
I’m glad to hear that PW. This is a sad and poignant post, but also reminds us that there can always be some form of redemption
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August 12, 2014 at 1:05 am -
I`m afraid that after reading what was a very well written and truly moving story the only thing that immediately registered was trying to equate three crisp notes with fifty pounds.
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August 12, 2014 at 8:32 am -
I had the same problem – two twenties and a ten!
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August 12, 2014 at 11:39 am -
Thanks for stepping in there, Anna. I was going to point that out, but I wasn’t sure if jerym was being serious!
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